In an astonishing statement on Wednesday, Trump again absolved Russia from responsibility for the hacking of the DNC and the Clinton campaigns. Trump told Time magazine that the U.S. intelligence was accusing Russia of the hack because of politics and that he rejected their conclusion. Democrats in both houses of Congress are pressuring the administration to disclose more details about Russia’s role in disrupting the campaign of Hillary Clinton in order to help Donald Trump win the 2016 U.S. elections. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) said he would lead an inquiry into the Russian operation. Graham said he would pursue inquiries via subcommittees of which he is the chair.

We can create software with 100 times fewer vulnerabilities than we do today, according to computer scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). To get there, they recommend that coders adopt the approaches they have compiled in a new publication.

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) and PayPal announced a new partnership this morning in order to conduct joint research and development in the fields of big data, machine learning and cyber security. It is the first such collaboration between PayPal and an Israeli university. PayPal’s involvement in big-data and machine learning technology has been supported by its significant R&D activity in Israel, starting with the acquisition of Fraud Sciences in 2008 and the establishment of a global risk and data sciences R&D center in Tel-Aviv.

As an increasing number of devices — from cars to light bulbs to kitchen appliances — connect with computer networks, experts are raising concerns about privacy and security. Just this fall, attackers used compromised home devices, including security cameras and DVRs, to bombard an Internet infrastructure company with traffic, slowing Internet access for much of the U.S. East Coast. to address these concerns, an organization of academics and industry leaders released a report that provides guidance on how to build security and privacy protections into the emerging Internet of things (IoT).

Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) led seven members of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday in asking President Barack Obama to declassify information relating to the Russian government and the U.S. election. Russian government hackers – employed by two Russian government agencies — conducted a hacking and disinformation campaign in the run up to the election, aiming to undermine Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump, but no evidence has emerged to suggest that the Russian government hackers interfered with the voting process itself.

Check Point Research Team says that on Tuesday, hard work done by the company’s security research teams revealed a new and alarming malware campaign. The attack campaign, named Gooligan, breached the security of over one million Google accounts. The number continues to rise at an additional 13,000 breached devices each day. The company’s research exposes how the malware roots infected devices and steals authentication tokens that can be used to access data from Google Play, Gmail, Google Photos, Google Docs, G Suite, Google Drive, and more.

Cyberattacks on corporations, agencies, national infrastructure and individuals have exposed the fragility and vulnerability of the internet and networked systems. Achieving truly secure cyberspace requires addressing both the technical vulnerabilities in systems, as well as those that arise from human behaviors and choices. NSF awards $70 million to support interdisciplinary cybersecurity research.

The Russian government’s broad hacking campaign to undermine Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid and help Donald Trump become the U.S. next president may well be the template Russia is following in the run-up to next year’s German general election. Russia has actively – both overtly and covertly — supported right-wing, ethno-nationalist, populist, and proto-Fascist parties like Front National in France, Golden Dawn in Greece, Ataka in Bulgaria, and Jobbik in Hungary. These parties share not only anti-immigrant policies – but they are also fiercely anti-EU and want to distance their countries from NATO. One of the major themes in the public rallies – and political platform – of the German far-right, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant Pegida movement is that the influence of President Vladimir Putin’s Russia in Germany would be a welcome alternative to the imperial designs of the United States and Brussels.

Currently, utility companies in North America have procedures and capacity to handle localized power outages caused by events such as extreme weather and high usage on hot days. However, there are not any tools available to resolve the type of widespread outages that can be caused using malware. Researchers from SRI International are leading a collaborative team to develop cutting-edge technology that can be used by utilities and cyber first responders to restore power to an electric grid that has come under a cyberattack.

Natural disasters, such as the recent Hurricane Matthew in the Caribbean, present a huge challenge for governments, non-governmental organizations, and of course the individuals and communities affected. But studies of the effectiveness or otherwise of the responses to these disasters typically focus on official activities, producing a top-down view of what unfolded. Researchers studying the 2011 Thailand flooding disaster – the world’s fourth most severe natural disaster at that time instead looked at how individuals on the ground used social media to share information and offer support, often in areas where the official response was lacking or ineffective.

Check Point researchers identified a new attack vector, named ImageGate, which embeds malware in image and graphic files. Furthermore, the researchers have discovered the hackers’ method of executing the malicious code within these images through social media applications such as Facebook and LinkedIn.

As long as humans are writing software, there will be coding mistakes for malicious hackers to exploit. A single bug can open the door to attackers deleting files, copying credit card numbers or carrying out political mischief. A new program called Shuffler tries to preempt such attacks by allowing programs to continuously scramble their code as they run, effectively closing the window of opportunity for an attack.

Researchers have demonstrated malware that can turn computers into perpetual eavesdropping devices, even without a microphone. Using SPEAKE(a)R, malware that can covertly transform headphones into a pair of microphones, the researchers show how commonly used technology can be exploited.

In the age of WikiLeaks, Russian hacks and increased government surveillance, many computer users are feeling increasingly worried about how best to protect their personal information — even if they aren’t guarding state secrets. Luckily, there is a solution: Hypnoguard, powerful new software developed by Concordia researchers to safeguard data even when computer is in sleep mode.

Army Secretary Eric Fanning announced plans to launch the federal government’s most ambitious “bug bounty” challenge, known as “Hack the Army.” Building off the Army’s previous “Hack the Pentagon” program earlier this year and similar initiatives advanced by private sector companies, the Army will offer cash rewards to hackers who find vulnerabilities in select, public-facing Army Web sites. unlike the Hack the Pentagon program, which offered hackers static Web sites that were not operationally significant as targets, Hack the Army will offer dynamic exchanges of personal identifiable information, sites considered critical to the Army’s recruiting mission.

The long view

The evidence of cyberattacks by Russian government hackers against the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign is not only incontrovertible – this is the conclusion of both the U.S. intelligence community and leading cyber experts – but such attacks are nothing new. “This is not a new activity. It is new only in the United States. They routinely undertake cyber operations against democracies in Eastern Europe and other neighbors in the region, mostly to effect turnout, to spread propaganda, and to make the election seen less legitimate,” says Christopher Porter of FireEye’s iSIGHT team. “Ultimately they want to break democracy itself” in the United States and “around the world, wherein it is seen like a less legitimate system. That’s their ultimate goal to send message to the public that democracy cannot be trusted.”

Stanford cybersecurity expert Herb Lin says the 21 October cyberattack that snarled traffic on major Web sites reveals weaknesses in the Internet of Things that need to be addressed. But stricter security requirements could slow innovation, cost more and be difficult to enforce.

A key difference between cybersecurity threats and other security threats is the mismatch between public and private capabilities and levels of authority in responding to these threats. The lack of government resources to defend the private sector from digital threats places businesses on the front lines of the cyber conflict and can put national security, economic vitality, and privacy at risk. A new report calls for increased collaboration between the public and private sectors to use available tools more effectively to disrupt and deter cyber threats, noting the collaboration between the private sector and policymakers is long overdue.

The world is dangerously unprepared for a global disaster sparked by cyberattacks on space infrastructure. Much of the world’s infrastructure – including the economies and militaries of the world’s developed countries – is dependent on space machinery, and any disruption of that machinery would have a cascading consequences – some merely debilitating, other catastrophic. Governments around the world have invested heavily in protecting infrastructure on Earth – yet not nearly enough has been done to thwart threats from space to that infrastructure.